


Clint Barton's Unorthodox (And Possibly Deadly) Friend-Making Methods

by kilme



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Author plays fast and loose with WtNV, Clint's poor self-preservation instincts, Humour, Like danger treated cavalierly, M/M, Phil Coulson from Night Vale, Warning for normal Night Vale stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 09:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17159711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kilme/pseuds/kilme
Summary: Clint deals with danger everyday. The fact that Phil's apartment tries to kill him is just a small thing, really.





	Clint Barton's Unorthodox (And Possibly Deadly) Friend-Making Methods

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'ed, and I'm not far into WtNV yet, so this is mostly based on knowledge gleaned from crossover fics, with lots of imagination liberally applied. This is silly, written-at-4am stuff, so don't expect much. But here's my contribution to these lovely fandoms anyway! :D

Phil hadn't had people over to his apartment in a while. A couple of years, as a matter of fact, since his previous girlfriend (the first outsider he'd dated) and he broke up.

Over the fact that his pillows sometimes grew teeth and liked to use those teeth to comb the occupants' hair, of all the possible things. Sure the teeth were sharp, but hair-combing was a pretty good declaration of non-malevolence, Phil thought. Anna had disagreed. Loudly, while storming around, packing her few belongings up.

Well, it was bound to end sooner or later, what with Phil's top-secret missions with the vague but menacing government organisation that meant he was away more often than not. He couldn't say he was especially devastated after Anna left - the vague but menacing government organisation demanded complete devotion. He never thought of Anna when on missions or at work, which meant he thought of Anna perhaps four days a month.

But anyway, back to the point. Phil hadn't had others in his apartment in a while, hadn't expected anyone to come over for a while more, and thus could not be blamed for the events that followed.

Your past just had a tendency to sneak up on you, especially on Thursday nights such as this one, when the moon was big and round and bright in the cloudless sky.

* * *

Clint Barton had odd ways of showing affection and declaring trust, which amounted to fairly the same thing for him. These odd ways of his lined up well with those of Natasha's, so it was never something they discussed. Some nights, they just ended up in each other's quarters in SHIELD barracks, lounging on each other's beds (because they didn't have couches) without any explicit invitation.

That's just how it worked between friends.

And after allowing Clint to go off the grid and subsequently bring back the deadliest assassin the world's ever seen, based on nothing but Clint's word, Clint figured that Coulson was at least a friend.

So naturally, he'd pilfered Coulson's address from his personnel file, made his way there, disarmed his handler's security systems, and casually swung in the kitchen window one fateful Thursday night. He was just about to call out a greeting (because he had a casual disregard for doors and locks but that didn't mean he was _stupid_ \- he didn't want to get shot from being an unknown intruder in the house) when he heard a strange ...chanting.

It wasn't in any language he recognised, and it had an extremely eerie quality that made the hair on the back of Clint's neck stand up and that filled him with an odd existential dread in the face of an absurd and meaningless world. It was odd because Clint generally lived with a constant level of dread, yes, but had honestly thought he'd gotten over that particular existential brand of it in his teens and early twenties.

Clint didn't recognise the voice chanting as Coulson's voice, but then again, he'd never heard Coulson chant. Armoured with this knowledge and hoping that no one else had broken into (or God forbid, been invited into) Coulson's apartment before him, Clint went to investigate.

He found Coulson kneeling before a ring of blood-red stones in a corner of his living room, hands fisted on his thighs. It would look like any ritual prayer, and it would in fact look peaceful, were it not for the fact that Coulson's eyes were open, pupil-less and the same blood-red as the stones, or the fact that sand swirled in the circle made by the stones, moved by a non-existent wind.

Clint was a firm believer of science. So he'd never gone to university, big deal, but he'd definitely have gotten a degree in some science-related field if he had. The fortune-teller in the circus had firmly convinced him that nothing she was doing had been supernatural in the slightest.

But above all else, Clint trusted his eyes. And this? This made him rub his eyes in disbelief, but given that nothing about the scene changed afterwards and he had not been exposed to anything psychedelic recently, Clint was forced to conclude that this was supernatural, or at least something he'd never encountered before.

Leave it to Phil Coulson to surprise him, of course.

Sometime between five minutes and an hour later (and there's another odd thing - Clint had a precise internal clock; he never lost track of time), Coulson blinked. The dust settled, his eyes were white again, and the stones turned a normal, dull shade of grey.

He made no signs of acknowledging Clint, but since Clint had not yet been attacked, Clint knew Coulson knew he was there.

Clearing his throat, Clint said carefully, "Didn't know you practiced religion, sir."

"It's not religion," Coulson replied as he packed the stones into a wooden box. His tone was exactly the same as ever, mild and placid.

Well, it wasn't any religion Clint had ever heard of. "What is it, then?"

Coulson paused. "A matter of survival."

He flashed a small, impossible-to-read smile at a dumbstruck Clint and rose to keep the wooden box.

* * *

When Phil returned to the living room, Barton was poking at the items he kept on the bookshelf (which contained no books, because they reminded him rather too much of Librarians) pushed against one wall. There were plenty of Captain America merchandise as well as various items he'd picked up from around the world on display, which should keep Barton occupied for awhile. He had no idea what Barton was doing in his apartment, but he knew how to be a good host.

Phil went into the kitchen after one last glance to make sure Barton was still firmly absorbed in Phil's private life and nowhere near finding the Thing He Did Not Think About that was, if he had to think about it, kept under the couch. He made two cups of coffee - one with milk and no sugar the way Barton liked it, and one with a splash of bleach the way he liked it - and returned to the living room.

Just in time to see Barton wandering far too close to the supply closet in his hallway, and for him to call out, "No, Barton-"

Before Barton was summarily snatched up by the being that lived in his spatial-temporal anomaly of a supply closet.

"Fuck," Phil muttered as he lounged for the lighter on his coffee table, then lounged for the closet, where a scuffle and Barton's yelling could be heard. He began a feverish chant as he snatched the closet door open and waved the tiny flame around.

An inhuman screech comparable to the screams of a thousand dying banshees could be heard in the echoing space of the closet that was much larger than it appeared to be, before Barton was dumped out onto the hardwood floor of Phil's hallway. The door to the closet was slammed shut without any conscious thinking on Phil's part.

Barton was bleeding sluggishly from scratches that covered most of his exposed skin and his clothes were quite torn up, but he still had four limbs attached (no more, no less), so Phil was obligated to shakily inform him, "You're very lucky."

The younger man was breathing heavily, awfully pale in the moonlight, but he immediately pinned Phil with an incredulous glare. It assured Phil that he was quite alright.

"Perhaps we should move away from the closet," Phil suggested.

Barton certainly didn't need telling twice - he scrambled away like a bat out of hell. Unfortunately, he decided that the couch was a safe place and collapsed into it with rather too much force. Which, the both of them shortly learnt, the Thing Phil Did Not Think About most definitely did not approve of.

By the end of the night, both of them were leaning against a living room wall, seated underneath the windowsill and exhausted the way they would be after a month-long mission. On the plus side, Phil had finally managed to get rid of the Thing. On the minus, well...

"You owe me a new couch," Phil panted, too out-of-breath to put the right amount of reproach into his tone. His couch was in tatters and his carpet was soaked with coffee and what was most likely the blood of undead entities, if such entities could bleed. His living room windows were broken, letting in a cool night breeze. He could almost be grateful that it was the end of summer and not the dead of winter.

"You owe me a new _heart_ , this one can't take much more," Clint panted back.

Phil was already beginning to think of the logistics of obtaining and installing said heart when Clint continued, oblivious to the bad joke he'd made, "But I'll settle for an explanation."

"That's easier to do," Phil said, relieved. He took a breath, preparing to launch into a long story. "So, I grew up in a small desert town called Night Vale..."

* * *

It was a terrible idea to visit Coulson's apartment without forewarning.

Which was, of course, why Clint did it again.

And again, and again, and again, until he learnt these things:

\- Never use the washing machine on the first Monday of each month. It gets cranky.

\- Never, ever enter or exit through the front door, not if you value your internal organs staying where they usually are. (He had no trouble with this one.)

\- Sometimes, you might feel the great yawning of the void when you wake up in the middle of the night. This is especially likely to be the case if the entire room is dark and you cannot see even the faintest sliver of light. If this happens, do NOT get out of bed.

\- The spatial-temporal anomaly that is the supply closet cannot be removed - they tried. Thankfully, it remains deathly afraid of fire.

\- The shower gel looks like blood when you squeeze it out, and each new bottle gives you gory nightmares when first opened, but it will smell like strawberry jam once applied.

\- If you ask really nicely, the toaster will occasionally spit out toast that isn't covered in black, certain-to-cause-cancer char. This was a fact that Phil did not know, and which they celebrated. Fervently.

\- Phil likes to listen to a radio channel manned by 'Cecil', though Clint could never really hear more than brief snatches of bizarre words and soft, almost gentle-sounding static.

\- It's really best not to let Phil cook.

And finally: the pillows are quite toothy, but don't actually mean any harm. For one, they never punctured Clint's face when he buried himself in them. For another, well, there's really no better declaration of non-malevolence than hair-combing, Clint thought.


End file.
